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Challenges & Opportunities for New Rental Construction 

These scenarios illustrate the new risks associated with building rental housing, and how these affect the scale, market rents, and ultimately, the viability of building new purpose-built rental – as well as what needs to change.

Download the Full Report (pdf)

No-Vacancy-UDI-Report_September-2022.pdf / 4.87 MB

As anyone who has looked for rental housing in BC can tell you – we have a rental housing shortage. It’s real and it has serious repercussions, from homelessness to limiting economic growth. But if demand is strong and rents are increasing why aren’t more market rental projects breaking ground?
The simple answer is government policy, taxes, and fees along with rising construction costs make them difficult to build.

It’s clear that we’re not building enough rental homes to meet the growing demand in our region. Without a more efficient process and substantial new supply, rental housing availability will remain constrained and the existing market rental rate will rise.

In order for builders to address the lack of available rental housing in their communities, there must be an understanding by all levels of government of the risks associated with the development process.

In this report, UDI breaks down the data that investors, banks, and developers use to make these decisions including sample business cases. The initial analysis was conducted in 2019 through the Making Rental a Reality Report. This analysis re-examines three locations in Metro Vancouver and the Capital Region to highlight the changes in fees associated with rental development between 2019 and 2021.

These scenarios illustrate the new risks associated with building rental housing, and how these affect the scale, market rents, and ultimately, the viability of building new purpose-built rental – as well as what needs to change.

Policy changes, increasing government taxes and fees, and the costs of construction are at the root of why new housing, especially rental, is difficult to build in today’s market.

Download the Full Report (pdf)

No-Vacancy-UDI-Report_September-2022.pdf / 4.87 MB
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